The Reverand Dr. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. passed away recently at the age of 81. This news saddened me, but I have been thinking about the impact that his life had on mine, and how incredibly grateful I am to have known Bill Coffin many years ago. My work as a community volunteer, as a civil rights and poverty lawyer, and everything in between were motivated and inspired by him. In the pantheon of my personal heroes, Wlilliam Sloane Coffin, Jr. sits at the center. He once said, "Doing good works does not make a person good; good people just always seem to do good works."
In 1979, Coffin was one of three American clergymen who traveled to Iran to spend Christmas with the Americans who had been taken hostage by student militants during the revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Coffin was shown on the news playing the piano, talking with the hostages, and offering them messages of hope. At that time, I had no idea who he was, but the news indicated that he was the Senior Minister at Riverside Church, which was right around the corner from my Barnard dorm. I went the following Sunday, curious to hear a first hand account by the man I'd seen on the news. One sermon, and I was hooked.
Coffin was a man who was larger than life, with a life story that read like a liberal, but true, version of Forrest Gump. Wherever things were happening and social change was occuring, Coffin was in the thick of it. He was a Freedom Rider during the Civil Rights movement, was arrested along with Daniel Berrigan and Dr. Spock for resisting the Vietnam War, led the Nuclear Disarmament movement in the 1980's and was a vociferous opponent of apartheid in South Africa when most of the world turned its back. He spoke out in favor gay rights when people still said the word "homosexual" in hushed tones and pretended it didn't exist. He urged his congregation not to condemn others "for the way that they love." He was a man of his time and ahead of his time. His powerful baritone voice soared above the choir in hymns, and above the crowds in protest.
I attended Riverside for many years, more for the messages of social justice than for the religious content. My mom was raised as a Buddhist, and my dad as an Pentecostal Christian. At some point, they must have just agreed to disagree and left my brothers and me to figure it out for ourselves. They were surprised when I joined the church and decided, as an adult, to be baptised.
As part of the membership process, I had to write an essay on "What God Means to Me" and meet with Bill Coffin to discuss it. I was nervous about it, and didn't want to look foolish in front of someone I admired so much. At age 20, what did I know? Having Coffin as my spiritual mentor was like having Barry Bonds coaching Little League.
At our meeting, he reassured me that my thoughts and my doubts were valid. I told him that, to be honest, I didn't really believe in the whole heaven/hell thing. I thought it was like saying that everything we do here on earth doesn't really count for much, that's it's all just one big entrance exam to some exclusive club. How could Christ admonish us to accept and welcome all people, as he did, if Heaven was such a particular and exclusive place? He laughed and said, "To be honest, I'm not so sure about that part either." He told me that for a person's faith to have real meaning, you had to question and doubt, but listen to your heart to find the answers.
Pete Seeger was playing a concert at the church that night, and stopped in while I was meeting with Coffin,. He introduced me to Pete and his wife, Toshi. I was more thrilled than I would have been to meet Mick Jaggar and Keith Richards, to be in the presence of two liberal icons.
One of the most memorable sermons I remember hearing was his Eulogy for Alex. His twenty-four year old son, Alexander, died in a car crash in 1983. Ten days afterwards, he delivered a sermon that was so moving and so powerful that I sat in the pew and cried from beginning to end. I never met his Alex, but there are parts of that sermon that have resonated with me for over twenty years. In it, he quotes Hemingway, who said, "The world breaks everyone; then some become strong at the broken places."
It was seventeen years later, when my own Alexander was born, that I could begin to understand the depths of the pain he must have been in when he delivered that sermon. Only now do I appreciate what steely resolve would have allowed him, after losing a child he adored, to manage to pick himself up and bring himself to do his job, to come to make us feel better when his own heart must have been shattered into a million pieces. He explained it to us that he was only standing there before us, held up by the love of this congregation, his family, and friends.
My favorite benediction that Coffin often gave was this:
O Lord, take our mouths and speak through them;
Take our hands and work through them,
Take our minds and think through them,
And take our hearts and set them on fire.
For years, I tried to live up to this challenge. During the early eighties, I dedicated most of my free time to volunteering at the church and serving on committees for Prisoners' Rights, Nuclear Disarmament, and World Hunger. Why? Because Bill Coffin asked me to. Every sermon was a personal invitation, a challenge to be more Christ-like, to be more Coffin-like. Each sermon was a personal invitation to do what was right, to do your individual part in creating a little more justice, a little more caring in a world that desperately needed it. His sermons always seemed to reach right into my heart and pull a string that I did not know existed and would never have otherwise explored. If Coffin said, "help the homeless," I signed up for a shift at the church's new makeshift shelter. If Coffin said, "feed the hungry," I volunteered at the food pantry. If Coffin said, "The arms race must stop," I marched in a demonstration to stop nuclear proliferation. When Coffin said, "Nuclear energy is poisoning people," I marched on Three Mile Island. I decided to go to law school and become a civil rights lawyer and practice in the poorest neighborhood in the Bronx because of these experiences. My education at Barnard taught me about the life of the mind; my education at Riverside taught me about the life of the heart, the life lived with passion and purpose, compassion and conviction.
The memories of my years at Riverside are punctuated by some amazing events and people that I had the opportunity to see and hear for myself... Olaf Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden speaking out against nuclear disarmament. Metropolitan Opera star Jessye Norman singing "There is a Balm in Gilead" that I can still hear in my head and feel in my heart. Archibishop Desmond Tutu beseeching the congregation to speak out against apartheid, when I had never even heard that word before. Marching alongside hippies and coal miners at Three Mile Island. Kim Dae-Jung, who was then a recently released political prisoner, and later was elected President of Korea, and his stunningly brilliant wife, speaking to a small group of rapt listeners. The indominatable peace activist Cora Weiss, leader of the Riverside Disarmament Program, whom I adored as much as I admired Coffin. Handing out flyers in front of Union Carbide and meeting businessmen who worked there and had no idea that the company made nuclear weapons. In 1990, I couldn't get into the church the day Nelson Mandela came; instead, I went with my legal services coworkers to Yankee Stadium where tens of thousands of New Yorkers greeted Mandela like a rockstar. I was privileged to bear witness to history, to be part of something larger than myself, to be a face in the crowd.
Over the years, I was so active in the church that I was nominated to be a deacon. Coffin encouraged me, because he thought that I would bring a youthful perspective to the group. During the church election period, he asked me to read a passage of scripture one Sunday. I was mortified of getting up in front of 5,000 people and speaking. I was mortified that I would fall off my high-heeled shoes walking in the processional. I was mortified I would open my mouth and nothing but a squeak would come out. I was mortified that I would let Coffin down. Despite my fears and insecurities, I agreed, because again, I couldn't say no to Bill Coffin.
In the Minister's robing room prior to the start of the service, he must have sensed my anxiety. He came over to me, draped his arm around me and said, "Don't worry, dear. Just say it like you are delivering some wonderful news, something that everyone needs to hear. You'll be fine."
The passage was from St. Paul's letter to the Philippians:
Whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report; if there is any virtue, and if there is any praise, think about these things. The things which you learned, received, heard, and saw in me: do these things, and the God of peace will be with you. Not that I speak in respect to lack, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content in it... I know how to be humbled, and I know also how to abound. In everything and in all things I have learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in need...I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. Philippians 4:8-9; 12-13.
I read the words again, and let the meaning sink in. I lost all my fear, delivering my reading with gusto. I looked out at that vast hall, with the stained glass windows, high-vaulted ceiling, and looked into the faces of people I had come to know and love, and was transformed from a bundle of nerves to a confident bearer of good news. I came down from the pulpit after my reading, and Coffin looked at me, nodded, and smiled. I have never received a greater compliment in my life.
When I left New York to go to law school, Cora Weiss threw a little going away party in the Riverside Disarmament Program office for me. The staff presented me with a framed poster for the Olaf Palme Memorial Disarmament Lecture. It was hearing Olaf Palme's impassioned speech about the nuclear arms race that led me to volunteer for the program, stuffing envelopes, running errands, writing copy for brochures and doing whatever they needed doing. That poster has traveled with me to every place I've called home since then, and hangs in my kitchen today. It is my way of reminding myself of a time when my idealism turned to action.
Bill Coffin often said, "The world is not something we inherit from our ancestors, but something borrow from our children." I hope my own son grows up to know that I tried my best and did my part to make it worthy of him and his generation. My fear is that I and those of my generation have failed him. I worry that he will grow up to take the easy route, to do nothing because doing justice and doing good is just too hard. I worry that I am not being a good enough model for a life of compassion and conviction, of passion and purpose, that somehow I left that life behind when I left Riverside. I worry that he won't have role models like Bill Coffin, to show him that every little bit counts, that you don't do it to secure a place in heaven, you do it because the future and the people you leave behind depend on it.
Years have passed, and I am no longer a 20-something with a passion for possibilities; I'm a 40-something mom with a busy schedule. I no longer march in demonstrations; I march through the routines of daily life, shuttling my kid around, going to work, and managing a 100-item household to-do list. I no longer write brochures for peace activists; I write checks. I no longer go out at night to hear leaders and activists speak on what is right; I watch insipid reality TV. I passively sign up for e-mail newsletters and read about what other people are doing. I barely watch the news and am apathetic about voting for uninspiring candidates. I haven't been to church in ten years. I never lost my idealism, just my enthusiasm.
All of these events of my life, past and present, whirled like a silent newsreel in my mind's eye when I read that Bill Coffin had died. There, somewhere on the periphery of each frame and often center-stage, is Coffin, my American Idol, my minister, my mentor. Since I learned of his death, I have worried and wondered, "What can I do to honor him? What can I do to show that my life was made vastly richer for knowing him? That I am who and what I am because of him?"
Then, in writing this, it dawned on me, as though he spoke to my heart from a heavenly pulpit:
The things which you learned, received, heard, and saw in me: do these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
Once again, I just can't say no to Bill Coffin.
and was a terrific, engaging speaker.
